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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713357">The Right Questions</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard'>newsbypostcard</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>[rqg] small intimacies [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Getting Together, M/M, Post-RQG177, Reconciliation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:34:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,456</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What Zolf <em>can</em> do—something in this world he knows how to give—is to provide Wilde the thing he’d asked for again and again: for Zolf to sit with him a minute, and have a drink.</p><p>*</p><p>Post RQG177: Some conversations are best rehashed in the world of the living. The problem is starting them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>[rqg] small intimacies [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>189</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Right Questions</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>No one does violence in this fic—the "graphic depictions of violence" tag applies only to a fairly short paragraph where Zolf recalls finding Wilde's body; I rendered this memory in slightly more detail than Alex described. I did not tag for <b>major character death</b> as no one dies in this fic except in this memory; but the fic does, of course, deal with a canonical major character death, so be cautious all the same.</p><p>I briefly posted this fic last night well before public drop of the episode, realized I'd done that ten minutes later, deleted it, and am reposting it now. Very sorry, won't happen again.</p><p>Thank you as always to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung">starstrung</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkcycle">hawkcycle</a> for mutual bother society antics.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>
</p><p>Let it never be said Zolf never tries anything new.</p><p>There are the necessary tasks, all too familiar: stabilization, then the time and energy it takes a person to heal from that kind of state. The druids are helpful—by the love of Aphrodite, does Zolf owe them the world—but no magic can do everything. </p><p>Zolf tries his damndest anyway. He finds himself surprisingly busy: does his best for Sassraa, spends lots of time with Carter. Fills twelve to nineteen hours a day with healing and liaising, cooking when he can. </p><p>Naturally, because nothing is simple, Zolf’s also embroiled in conversations about wider affairs he doesn’t really feel engaged with. He doesn’t want to talk about the fact that they’re basically in the North Pole. He doesn’t care about the Northern Wastes. They could be in the Bermuda Triangle for all he cares. All he cares about is that the patients are warm enough—they are now; Zolf and Azu fashioned an infirmary of sorts next to the hearth in the ship, something that took better than a week to set up—and beyond that it’s sorted. He doesn’t care about where they’re going or what happens next. He’s got mouths to feed and people to heal. </p><p>When he is forced to involve himself in life beyond the necessaries, Zolf finds himself looking over his shoulder in Wilde’s general direction throughout the discussions. He should be here, Zolf thinks, but he wouldn’t want him to be.</p><p>Not yet.</p><p>Food and meditation—these, Zolf allows. He has to function, keep his healing powers up. Proper sleep isn’t really in the cards right now, but he prefers the consciousness of the living world regardless; of being aware as his energies restore. For all he was glad to learn the shape of Wilde’s dreams, it had also been a bit of a shock: A nice flat. A park. A decent sip, a normal career.</p><p>Leisure and choice—two things he doesn’t have on this side of the veil. </p><p>Better to focus on what’s in this world: Zolf’s glaive in his hands; the smell of the broth simmering in the kitchen, keeping everyone warm. </p><p>After a while Zolf learns it’s not his pulse he hears when he shuts his eyes—it’s the footfalls of the bear beneath them, slow and great, carrying on.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>*</p>
</div><p><br/>
</p><p>Each morning and evening, Zolf does his rounds. He heals Wilde the appropriate amount and says the appropriate amount to him, which is often little. It isn’t clear at first how much Wilde remembers from the other side—if he remembers. </p><p>Zolf’s behaviour is the same either way. “Put that down,” he snipes. </p><p>“You got it for me.” Wilde’s eyes are fixed on the page. Some of the first words out of Wilde’s mouth when he was conscious enough were, “Where’s the ship?” followed by, “I need you to get something for me,” followed by, “Yes, Zolf, I do need to work,” and finally, “This changes everything. Where have these druids been all this time?” </p><p>Zolf had opened his mouth properly for the first time since Wilde woke up, and after thirty minutes of bickering and a final shouted demand for a moment’s silence so Zolf could channel some positive energy into him just to calm down, Wilde immediately rejoined with, “This is what you brought me back for, so—”</p><p>“I didn’t bring you back to <em>work</em>, Wilde, no,” Zolf snapped, and Wilde stared at him as Zolf stared back.</p><p>Zolf’s cheeks reddened. He could never bloody tell when Wilde was smiling properly and when he was just being a smug bastard.</p><p>“Well, I’m here now,” said Wilde, and it was one of those times Zolf had no idea what he remembered. “I may as well be useful.” </p><p>“You can be useful when you’re properly healed.”</p><p>“Please,” Wilde said, but it couldn’t be a dismissal. It was too soft for that. Incredible how accosted Zolf felt by a genuine request. “I don’t trust anyone else to do it.”</p><p>So Zolf had gotten his stupid files. </p><p>He might have confiscated them again if it didn’t make everything a great deal easier that Wilde’s attention is divided when Zolf comes by. It makes the silence easier to bear. He and Wilde had gotten good at companionable silence in the past months, but now it weighs heavy with all the questions he should ask. Not the ones not born from necessity—he’s good with those, the “How are you feeling”s and the “Where does it hurt”s.</p><p>But—<em>Do you want to come back?</em> had been a necessary question. And Zolf had almost lost Wilde with that.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>*</p>
</div><p><br/>
</p><p>Once Wilde’s finally up and about and his organs all work properly, Zolf’s the one to bring him a drink. They’re in the North Pole, for crying out loud; they should have something to keep them warm.</p><p>Wilde accepts it with grace, clinking Zolf’s glass. They sit together, silent more often than not. Zolf thinks of the park Wilde had showed him, with its green grass and broad-leaf trees. Zolf’s tired of the winter, tired of rain and desolation. He wishes his hands weren’t always so cold. His patients never like it.</p><p>“How’s Earhart?” asks Wilde.</p><p>Zolf gives a short laugh. He knows Wilde doesn’t care about that. “She’s fine.”</p><p>“She leading the charge?”</p><p>“In a fashion.”</p><p>“Or are you?”</p><p>Zolf bristles. “Is work really how you want to spend this time?”</p><p>Wilde falls quiet and sips his drink.</p><p>“You know you can start,” Zolf says, instead of an apology.</p><p>“Start what?” says Wilde, and Zolf doesn’t bring it up after that.</p><p>He cooks furiously through that night, making a passable breakfast for twenty before closing his eyes. Meditation doesn’t last. He’s too angry, too guilty, incapacitated by his own regret. </p><p>It won’t do to ask Wilde what he remembers. Part of Zolf hopes he knows nothing of what Zolf made him leave. Wilde plainly wants to work so much because he doesn’t want to think about being dead—whether he remembers the afterlife or not. He’d taken metal shrapnel through the chest, for crying out loud; no one wants to think about that. Now there’s pain and fever, the torrid business of healing in the Northern Wastes; and if that isn’t enough, his primary care provider had taken him by the hand and pulled him out of paradise.</p><p>Leisure and choice. Two very difficult things to leave behind, even at the best of times. Now it’s up to Zolf to live up to that—to offer Wilde something better than a luxurious flat, than the promise of youth. Something better than having his whole life ahead of him, than worlds of possibility.</p><p>Zolf had a choice. He could have lied to him, could have said he didn’t need him. Left Oscar to his wildest dreams.</p><p>But he didn’t. He brought him back.</p><p>Maybe he <em>should</em> ask what Wilde remembers, to give Zolf reason to apologise. But—gods help him—he’s not sure he’s sorry enough to make it sound true.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>*</p>
</div><p><br/>
</p><p>What he <em>can</em> do—something in this world he knows how to give—is to provide Wilde the thing he’d asked for again and again: for Zolf to sit down with him. To sit for a minute, and have a drink.</p><p>With this mandate in mind, they make their way through Zolf’s contraband bottle in very short order. In their defense, the Northern Wastes are very cold.</p><p>“Have I performed to your expectations?” Wilde asks idly.</p><p>Zolf gives him a sharp look. As Wilde’s body heals, he stretches his limbs out more and more, as though making a point. It makes Zolf glad that Wilde’s more relaxed, though this does involve a lot of luxuriant positions that seem neither medically advisable nor strictly necessary.</p><p>“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zolf asks.</p><p>Wilde gestures loosely down his body. “Not every day you heal a fatal impalement.”</p><p>“I didn’t,” says Zolf. “I can’t, I couldn’t, I had no hand in that.”</p><p>“That’s not true. Others may have reversed the effect, but the rest was by your hand, to be sure.”</p><p>Zolf tries not to blush about it. “Clean-up work, that’s all. The druids did the heavy lifting.”</p><p>“Oh, take a compliment, for heaven’s sake. Might take a second resurrection before I muster another.”</p><p>Against Zolf’s better efforts, he turns the silence sour.</p><p>“Sorry,” Wilde says, when he notices. “I shouldn’t joke.”</p><p>“When’s that ever stopped you?”</p><p>Zolf does get a smile, then, too unguarded to be smug.</p><p>They’ve been doing this once every couple of days for the better part of two weeks now and haven't been getting anywhere. They’re getting somewhere now—unnecessary questions and honest answers. Zolf may as well try one of his own. “Are you feeling… I don’t mean physically,” he amends, rolling his eyes. “Are you feeling <em>well</em>, Oscar? Are you feeling—alright.”</p><p>The trouble with leading with sincerity is that Zolf never knows what he’s going to get in return: combativeness, dismissal, a deflecting joke, a glimmer of truth.</p><p>Wilde shifts, his discomfort plain, physical or otherwise. Zolf avoids the instinct to put a hand over Wilde’s chest, for one purpose or another. </p><p>“I am alive,” says Wilde. Honesty’s always gutting with him. “You know I—” But he stops there. When Wilde speaks again, it’s with a different tone, a little more aloof. “I find most things are endurable provided you’re alive at the end of it. This seems no exception.”</p><p>As pained as he is dissatisfied, Zolf grunts. </p><p>“There is still the enduring,” Wilde continues, “but enduring is the stuff of life, isn’t it?”</p><p>This is why Zolf prefers necessary questions. He’s not about to scold Wilde for his nihilism, no matter how cruel it feels to him. His pompousness is another matter. “Still incapable of a straight answer, are you?”</p><p>Wilde surprises him with a laugh. “Would you like one?”</p><p>“If I didn’t,” Zolf says through gritted teeth, “I wouldn’t ask, would I?”</p><p>Wilde is silent a moment. Fear grips at Zolf’s heart—if he remembers that, what else does he know?—before Wilde manages an answer. “Have you died before?”</p><p>Never mind, Zolf thinks; straight answers are unquestionably worse. “No.”</p><p>Wilde nods, sinks into his seat a little. “I’m not sure I can explain it,” he says. “I can remember the falling, but not the impact.”</p><p>Wilde’s relaxation forces Zolf’s in kind. “There’s a blessing in that.”</p><p>“Oh, certainly. Wouldn’t have liked to look down to see a tree through my chest.”</p><p>“Ship.”</p><p>Wilde blinks. “What?”</p><p>“Through your… it was a piece of the ship.”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>Zolf feels abruptly very ill. “Sorry.”</p><p>“You saw it, then?”</p><p>“I was the one that found you.”</p><p>“I see.” </p><p>Zolf takes a lengthy drink. </p><p>“In any case,” says Wilde, “I don’t think we’re meant to remember dying as a species. Don’t think many have had the chance.” He refills their glasses slowly, looking sly, as though inviting Zolf to object. Zolf doesn’t bother. He can help with the effects if they bother Wilde enough, and he’s too busy dealing with the ringing in his ears to pay much attention to future consequences. “I mean to say I am roughly as I’d be if I suffered a lengthy convalescence. There’s nothing to worry about, if that’s what you’re getting at.”</p><p>“Never is with you, is there?”</p><p>Wilde’s mouth twitches minutely. He hands Zolf a drink, a familiar gesture by now.</p><p>Zolf takes it. His gaze flickers to meet Wilde’s, who holds it only for a second before leaning back in his chair. </p><p>That he’s here is a miracle. Zolf thinks it every day.</p><p>“What did you want to do?” Zolf asks, trying to think about something other than his skewered body, his unseeing eyes. The blood he’d clearly coughed out of his mouth. “Before the meritocrats got their talons in you.”</p><p>Wilde looks at him oddly. “Well, I was a journalist.”</p><p>The silence grows strange. “I know,” Zolf says. “I always sort of thought—I mean, I wondered, if that wasn’t…” He huffs. “If that wasn’t part of the meritocratic project, of you being an agent of theirs. Running investigations looks a lot less suspicious when…”</p><p>“I wasn’t exactly an <em>investigative</em> journalist.”</p><p>“‘Course you were. You wanted to get to the bottom of who we were, so you, er…”</p><p>“Pumped Bertie for information?”</p><p>“That certainly is one way to put it.”</p><p>“You’re not jealous, are you, Zolf?”</p><p>“Jealous of what?” Zolf scoffs, before he sees the smile on Wilde’s face. “Oh, go shove it up your arse.”</p><p>Wilde sips his drink, smacking his lips. Luxuriating again. “I enjoyed the writing.”</p><p>Zolf waits for more, but Wilde provides none. “But you didn’t choose it?”</p><p>He shakes his head. “I thought I’d try it, but I’d have given it up rather fast if I’d had more of a choice.” <em>Choice.</em> “Writing for the tabloids was a bit utilitarian. Maybe you’ll agree; my profile on Bertie was a bit…”</p><p>“Florid.”</p><p>Wilde gives a short laugh. He’s laying it on thick now, but at least he’s still talking. “Precisely. All good art—well, I shouldn’t say all, but what use are artistic opinions if not prejudicial?—should serve a purpose, if only to evoke a particular image.” Zolf was disquieted by a lot in Oscar’s afterlife, but most striking had been the detail in it: Wilde’s clothes, his young appearance. The art on the walls, the decor of his flat—nothing glossed over. To ask Zolf where he wants to spend eternity, he isn’t sure he’s got the slightest idea. Wilde knew exactly. “Yet nothing about journalism admits to such a simple purpose,” Wilde goes on. “It’s obligated to tell a story with engagement and efficiency, but it must also be relevant and true. A great deal easier to tell a story of an inflated man whose consequences I am free to imagine.”</p><p>None of this is familiar to Zolf. It isn’t that he lacks creativity; what healing and cooking have in common is the invention in it. But critical, too, is its relevance to the world, his ability to touch it.</p><p>“I suppose that all sounds foreign to you,” says Wilde, as though reading his mind. “I’ve spent much of the last days imagining what your ideal afterlife might look like. But I can’t decide—”</p><p>Zolf nearly drops his drink in surprise. “You have?”</p><p>“—whether you prefer stormy seas or calm ones.”</p><p>Panic shoots across Zolf’s skin and settles again, leaves him in a sweat. “Calm,” he manages, just to say something.</p><p>“Nice galley to work with, I’m sure.” Gods help him, Wilde sounds almost whimsical. “Stocked pantry, a chest full of sharpened weapons… A crew to heal, warm hands to do it with.”</p><p>How does he know about the hands? “You noticed that?”</p><p>“Please, Zolf. You’re always shaking them, blowing on them, disappearing to warm them on the stove… It’s ridiculous. No one cares about—”</p><p>“I care.”</p><p>Wilde laughs again. Zolf looks at him; he can’t help it. He sounds so happy of <em>something</em>, Zolf can’t place what. “I know <em>you</em> care.”</p><p>Zolf almost breaks down then and there. He couldn’t say why.</p><p>“It made some kind of sense, seeing you there,” Wilde says. He’s not talking about what he was before, but he doesn’t need to clarify for Zolf to understand. “You’re everywhere I need you.” Gods, if only that were true. “You really ought to take a break sometime.”</p><p>Zolf clears his throat, then does it again for good measure. “What d’you think I’m doing right now?”</p><p>“Not sleeping.”</p><p>“I’ll sleep when I’m—” He cuts himself off, shutting his eyes. </p><p>Wilde, at least, laughs. “This doesn’t count as a break.”</p><p>“Why the hell not?”</p><p>“You’re obliged to be here.”</p><p>“I’m—” Zolf sits there, baffled. “I am most certainly not obliged to have a drink with you, Oscar.”</p><p>“Wonderful.” He gestures expansively. “There’s the door. Go take a nap.”</p><p>“There’s the…” Zolf shakes his head. “Are you saying you don’t want me here?”</p><p>“I didn’t say that.”</p><p>“Do you want me here or not, Wilde?”</p><p>“I only mean that if this is some sort of patient outreach—”</p><p>“Oh, for the love of…”</p><p>“I’m gratified that you’re concerned about my well being. Really, I am.”</p><p>“If this is some kind of backwards attempt…”</p><p>“But it’s one thing to say what’s necessary to resolve the situation at hand, and another to say what you mean. So, the former accomplished, there’s really no obligation to—”</p><p>It’s convenient that Zolf knows the precise location and dimensions of Wilde’s injuries; he can grab the front Wilde’s shirt with the knowledge it won’t hurt him. </p><p>“Oscar,” Zolf says, low, right in his face. “If there’s something you want to know, just ask.”</p><p>But Wilde’s face tells him he can’t. </p><p>Well, they have that in common. “Kick me out if you want,” Zolf says, “but I’m not leaving you until you make me.” He holds Wilde’s shirt a second longer for good measure, then finally lets go. </p><p>Wilde doesn’t say anything, or move. Zolf sips his drink stubbornly, willing his hands steady.</p><p>“That’s when I knew I was somewhere wrong, you know,” Wilde says, a strain in it. “When I realised you meant to leave.”</p><p>Startled, Zolf looks at him to find that he means it. “I,” Zolf says, but that sentiment’s wrong; “I,” he tries again, but that isn’t it either. He heaves a great sigh and takes another drink, then tells him the truth: “You left me first.” </p><p>Wilde’s head snaps over. Zolf can’t look at him, even when he knows he’ll regret not seeing his face, too ashamed of his impulsiveness in pulling Wilde here. “I know you didn’t mean to,” Zolf adds. “No more than I did.” </p><p>He can hear Wilde’s shallow breathing. What can Zolf say to explain what he’d felt? There were no words for what finding Wilde like that did to him: a devastation, an annihilation that left a ringing in his ears that didn’t leave for days. Zolf had been able to heal others only when he’d lied to himself that there might be some hope—that if he healed well enough and often enough, he might in the process learn how to bring Wilde back. </p><p>He hadn’t thought it was true. He knew matters of death nearly as intimately as he knew intricacies of life. He hadn’t really believed he might get Wilde back until he’d seen him standing in the afterlife in his perfect clothes, no scar on his face, saying Zolf’s name like he wanted him there.</p><p>Wilde’s finger is playing at Zolf’s sleeve. “I suppose it’s stupid to ask if you’re alright,” Wilde says; but anything more he might have said is lost when Zolf takes pity and grabs Wilde’s hand.</p><p>“I’m sick with it,” Zolf says. “I’m stupid. I can’t sleep anymore, I can’t do a damn thing.”</p><p>Wilde laughs thickly. Zolf hears his laughter for what it is now, nerves more than joy, but Zolf likes to hear it anyway; entwines their fingers, tries to pull Wilde’s hand into his lap. </p><p>Wilde has other ideas. He brings Zolf’s hand up to his mouth, brushing his lips to his knuckles. “I’m sorry,” Wilde whispers against his hand—and Zolf can’t abide that. He can’t stand to look at him with his eyes wrenched shut like he’s done anything wrong.</p><p>“Heaven’s sake,” Zolf mutters. He takes the drink from Wilde’s other hand, and by the time it’s on the table Zolf’s already climbed halfway into Wilde’s lap—the only way he can get to him, sitting like this. The man’s too damned tall. “Stop it,” Zolf mutters, taking Wilde’s face in both hands. “You’ve got nothing to atone for. You got nothing to be sorry about—look at me. Oscar, listen—you’re here. You’re here now, that’s what matters. And I don’t plan to take it for granted, not anymore; so if you want to get rid of me, now’s the time.”</p><p>Wilde looks at him, a smile flickering and subduing again, his hands on Zolf’s thighs like they belong. “I won’t be anyone’s burden,” Wilde says, masking terror with haughtiness, Zolf plainly sees. “You don’t owe me, Zolf, you don’t have to do—we can just save the world. It doesn’t have to be—”</p><p>“Shut up. Oh, for the love of—” And it’s far from the first time he’s wanted to; it’s not even the sort of fight he thought might eventually prompt it. But when Zolf finally kisses Wilde to shut him up, he grips Wilde as tight as Wilde grips back; and that alone—Wilde’s hand on his back, fingers tight in Zolf’s hair—almost makes it worth the stinking wait.</p><p><br/>
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